October 2008 Archives

LOUPED IN: Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Berman talks about strippers and Hope

Lisa Berman has worked with some of the toughest and most talented photographers in the editorial world.  From Annie and Mark, to Nigel and Norman, and I know she has plenty of stories to tell...

Learn more about photography editing with our 6 panelists on November 11th at  Louped In

(Photograph by Lisa Kereszi, "Julie onstage in red bikini, East Village, NYC, 2001")

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Auction Gallery Preview!

On Wednesday, November 19th we'll be auctioning over 100 framed prints at our Land Sea Air benefit auction at Hosfelt Gallery. Preview the work you'll be able to bid on that evening after the jump... … MORE

LOUPED IN: Behind the Music with BLENDER's David Carthas

David Carthas, Photography Director of Blender Magazine, is an avid collector or tintypes, ambrotypes, and glass negatives and is not too happy with Polaroid discontinuing their SX70 film.

I asked David what the best part of working for a music magazine was, who his favorite subjects have been, and what he's listening to...
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My Favorite Bookstore

Just beneath the shadow the the TransAmerica Pyramid, on Montgomery Street, lies one of San Francisco's hidden gems: William Stout Architectural Books. Just yesterday, I spent my lunch hour poring through the thousands of volumes, new and rare, and picked up a couple of gems, including this gorgeous 1967 El Lissitzky biography:… MORE

Digital Paper: Closer than You Think

Wired has posted an article, "Flexible Displays Closer to Reality", that reports on how quickly the technology for thin flexible (paper-like) digital displays is progressing, possibly available as soon as 2010! The surprise news to me is that this speed-to-market is thanks in large part to the U.S. Army and the nearly $44 million they've invested in the technology since 2004. U.S. troops will be the first to get their hands on it, but the goal is to make flexible displays commercially available.
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"The Negatives Are a Joy to Print"

With less than three weeks until the SPD Photo Auction everything is in full gear: pictures are being framed, invitations are about to go out, the online and printed catalogs are being designed, the wine is being chilled and you should be planning what to wear. We have over 100 beautiful  framed photographs which would be the envy of Sotheby's and Christie's. And much better prices. Put your investment in something that can't disappear... something you can enjoy and still know you're making a great investment.

I spoke to Kurt Markus last night about his luscious photo (above) that he so generously donated... his words are as beautiful as the image: … MORE

Bangalore Bounty

From my one of my favorite interns:

What can be seen through a crowd of millions in a rapidly developing city in India? Really cool design! When my sister asked me to move to Bangalore, India for six months to work on the graphic design end of branding a few of her businesses, I jumped at the chance. Though stressful at times, working here has been a rewarding experience. Business is definitely handled in a different way and design seems to be divided into two worlds. One world is hand-made while the other is digitally produced.

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RIP: Radar, Again -- and 02138?!?

We shouldn't be surprised (we shouldn't, right?) but we kinda believed the "we are open forever" bit: news from the Observer that recently redesigned Radar is closing, again, and will revamp, again, to position itself as a website. Again. Staffers were notified this morning, and are to have desks cleared-out by the end of the day.

And then, to make this gray Friday a little bleaker, word that also recently-revamped 02138 is shuttering as well. Daily Intel has the full report.

To-do for the weekend: buy some friends some drinks...


RELATED:  RIP: CosmoGIRL!

James Victore Is A Sellout?

Yep, James has indeed turned his back on the amazing social and political work that made him famous and is now doing what he said graphic design shouldn't do: sell socks.
At the Gap. He's there right now.

Ok, not really.
But what IS on the verge of selling out is James' Speakeasy talk next Monday evening.

For a sample of the shy and reserved man behind the work being considered for the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection in November click here. (directed by Hillman Curtis).

James likes to think of graphic design as a club with spikes.
Come have a cocktail and see him use it Monday night at 7 p.m.!

ART DIREDITOR:
Interview with Vanessa Holden, New VP Editor-In-Chief of Martha Stewart Weddings

Vanessa Holden joined Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in August 2008 as Editor-in-Chief of Martha Stewart Weddings. Vanessa came to MSLO from Vanessa Holden AD+D, a consulting firm focused on magazine development as well as book and branding projects, specializing in food and lifestyle. Prior to that she was Creative Director of Real Simple magazine, and before that co-founded and worked as the Creative Director of the award-winning Donna Hay magazine. A native of Australia, Vanessa previously worked at Marie Claire (Australia) and Marie Claire Lifestyle (Australia), Vogue Entertaining and Travel and Vogue Living.

DB : So Nessa....I have to do a blog. I want to interview you about your new job as editor of Martha Stewart Weddings. Maybe talk about how it's been going and how it's different from your previous position as creative director of Real Simple... you know.... what it's like.  What do you say??? I loved talking to you at our lunch. C'mon Aussie!

VH : G'damn demanding moose-huntin' trout-fishin' hockeystick swingin' Molson-swillin' Canuck. Of course, anything for you. Does this mean we get to have a cocktail?

Cocktail sounds good, but I was thinking back and forth e-mailin'--no hockey! Cocktails later, but would love to see you soon.

Best,
Your "Eh" talkin', beaver trackin', rye on the rocks swillin' and in general f'in' awesome Canuckin.'
Deb

P.S. Fit that on your big rock, koala lovin', Foster swillin' crock huntin' Dundee.
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Worth A Look

To celebrate their 25th anniversary (of this iteration), Vanity Fair has been making lists of all the best things: parties and books and, of course, photography. The slideshow of their top 25 news photographs is online here. The photos, some downright haunting, stretch back far before just the last 25 years, oddly enough to 1936, the year the first era of VF ended.

Any you think they missed?

Jesse Owens in the final of the long jump at the 1936 Olympics, in Berlin. From Fox Photos/Getty Images.

Michele McNally awarded Picture Editor of the Year...

...at the Lucie Awards at Lincoln Center!
SPD congratulates all the evening's winners.

Couldn't be there?  Well come see what all the excitement is about when Michele McNally and a panel of photo editors talk about what inspires them at LOUPED IN on Tuesday, November 11.

Photograph by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
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Process: Christopher Silas Neal

While searching for illustrators to recommend for a magazine redesign project we're working on at my studio, I recently visited Christopher Silas Neal's web site (www.redsilas.com). Chris' work is very painterly and evocative with a mixture of image, symbols, and type.… MORE

LOUPED IN: TONIGHT!

"The world now contains more photographs than bricks, and they are, astonishingly, all different."  -  John Szarkowski

The Photography Editors

They began in philosophy and film, retail and environmental studies; but today they are all photography editors: passionate about the images they produce, and the photographers they work with. On Tuesday night they'll talk about what sparks their imagination, their inspirations, and the assignments that keep them questioning, "how should this look?"
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Save the Date

Photography Auction: Wednesday, November 19th 2008

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Party Preview: The Space

This year's LandSeaAir auction has moved to a fine art gallery and will go live on November 19th.  Hosfelt Gallery has graciously allowed us their gorgeous space to house our growing collection.  We will be auctioning about 100 framed photographs from the editorial community's finest:  Seliger, Sirota, Winters, Afanador and more.  Stay tuned for more party details!
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Two BBC Video Shorts on the 'Paperless Paper'

The BBC has posted a short video interview with Dean Baker, manager at Plastic Logic. They're the maker of a super-thin electronic reader due out early next year. The video gives you a good sense of how the (still unnamed) product will look and operate.
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Imitation is Flattery?

Hi all, quick question...I illustrated the logo on the left a few years ago for a small burger shop in Brooklyn, it's copyrighted on all display / menus / collateral. I got a text the other night from the NY Food & Wine Festival, saying a major restaurateur ripped it off. The logo on the right just came to me...I think they're pretty different, others say it's too close for comfort and find out the extent of their usage. Not a new topic but an ongoing one; I'm curious what you think at what point is a copyrighted design is original, inspiration, or just an idea out in the world? It's basic deconstructing a sandwich... but if it was your small startup business versus a multi-million dollar franchise does that change the picture?

Inspiration: Télérama

If you've read my recent blogs, you've probably figured out by now that I'm not only a bit of a francophile, but also a huge Avedon fan, so forgive moi, but here comes just one more... On my recent trip to Paris, I also caught the very last day of the Avedon show at the Galerie de Jeu De Paume. Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004 was an awe-inspiring retrospective that showed the photographer's span of work from the beginning of his career to his death in 2004, from his fashion photographs for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, to his portraits in the American West. In case you missed this exhibition, you can check out most of the work shown in his series of books at amazon.com. But since sadly, the Avedon show is over, so I wanted to share what I happened to pick up when as I was leaving the gallery, a little French magazine called Télérama.… MORE

The Best $60 You'll Spend Today

Our friend and frequent collaborator, Jonathan Hoefler (who drew our sparkly new SPD logo), over at H&FJ, creators of many of the fine typefaces in use on this very site, just let us know that his "Artists for Obama" limited edition poster is available over at the campaign's site.

Jonathan had this to say about his effort:
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The Atlantic's Redesign

The Atlantic has had eight redesigns in its 151 years. James Bennet writes in his editor's note, that the November issue's new design is, "...the eighth effort to harmonize The Atlantic's style with its substance and the timbre of the times."

The design was done by Pentagram and in that same issue Michael Bierut's article A Question of Balance describes the magazine's new look.
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Great Minds...

Maybe it's just us, but there seems to be something similar between this Sunday's New York Times Magazine and next week's WIRED covers. Can't quite put our finger on it quite yet...

NYT AD Arem Duplessis and WIRED CD Scott Dadich assure us it's a total coincidence, though the two were seen carousing togther at the SPD West event last Sunday night. The Times' image is one in a series of three photographs by Martin Klimas and WIRED's shot is a construction by Stephen Doyle, photographed by Zachary Zavislak.

Luke Hayman on the Best and Worst Magazine Design Trends

Pentagram's Luke Hayman, one of the magazine industry's most respected and prolific designers, was filmed at "FOLIO:Show 2008" discussing the best and worst trends of 2008.

Watch the video after the jump.
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RIP: CosmoGIRL!

That exclamation point is theirs, not ours -- sad news from Hearst, via NYmag.com, that CosmoGIRL! is folding. 

The Fader #57 Photo Special

While the world AIDS crisis has received much media and political attention, coverage of the disease here in the United States has by comparison been relatively neglected. Only after the recent release of statistics detailing a marked and shocking increase in cases--particularly amongst young African-American women--has the news media responded to the seriousness of the issue here at home. But however shocking these figures--there are 1.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS in America and the disease is leading cause of death of African American women between the ages of 15-34--they do little to make those at risk identify with those affected. Krisanne Johnson's photo essay in the current issue of The FADER focuses on the ordinary lives of young, black, American positive women. The story brings a human face to the impersonal statistics and gives an individual voice to some of those affected. From New York to Mississippi we are able to witness the everyday lives of these women, their family and their friends, while the text details first hand the experiences of two of these women, Marvelyn Brown and Lolisa Gibson, living with AIDS.

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Time.com's Redesign: A Q&A

TIME.com recently launched a new home page design. Soon after it went live, I got in touch with the site's design director Sean Villafranca and Shivani York, their director of product development. Sean and Shivani are both former colleagues who spent several years working together at nytimes.com. In this Q&A, they take us through some of the significant changes made to the TIME.com site and explain the process they went through.

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Ready For Its Closeup

Can a news magazine retouch its photos? Debate rages on. … MORE

It's All Greek To Me!

VOMIT.
MOTHER-IN-LAW.
SQUEEZE.

What do these words have in common?
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Tuesday Night! Paper to Pixels

Our panel discussion Paper To Pixels is tonight at the Katie Murphy Amphitheater at F.I.T.
The doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the talk begins at 7 p.m.
Click Here for full details on the event including a bio and Q + A with each panelist.
Come join us for a night of great work and conversation!

Type-spiration

It's fantastic to see the efforts that have shaped typography into what's determined some of our current design direction today. A great example is this rad vintage design annual I found laying on W's Art Intern (Krzysztof Piatkowski's) desk called Typographic Directions - Trends in Visual Advertising, Designed by Herb Lubalin.
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PAPER TO PIXELS: Who is Ian Adelman?

What does an industrial designer know about designing a website?
Ask the man responsible for taking New York Magazine online.
(He was the founding art director of Slate.com, too.)

Ian Adelman is the Design Director of the New York Media websites: nymag.com and recently acquired (and soon to be redesigned) menupages.com.
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Get Me Patrick!

We all remember the scene in, "The Devil Wears Prada" where Meryl Streep, as Anna Wintour yells at her assistant, played by Anne Hathaway, to get Demarchelier on the line, his name being tossed around throughout the film as if he were Madonna or Prince. Well the Musée du Petit Palais did get Patrick, and the result is truly inspiring.… MORE

A Frame

We sent 57 prints to the framer this week in preparation for this year's LandSeaAir Auction on November 19th. Yes, that's right, the framer! This year, you'll be happy to know that you can leave the Auction with a gorgeous, framed, apartment-ready image to grace your home. The selection of images thus far is varied and inspired with something to satisfy everyone's sensibilities. Stay tuned for sneak peeks of the work we'll be exhibiting... Raymond Meier anyone?

PAPER TO PIXELS: Who is Paul Schrynemakers?

If taking a print magazine to the web sounds pretty damn hard, how about taking FIVE online?
And what if they happen to be massive, million-plus circ. magazines like Men's Health, Women's Health and Prevention...both domestic and international publications?

Paul Schrynemakers, after a 7 year stint as the creative director for ivillage.com, is a creative director for Rodale, a global health and wellness company.
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Sneak Peek: American Photography 24

As most of us know from the email blast of last week, we're not so far away from the release of the American Photography annual, the 24th such installment. This year, AP24 was designed by SPD's very own Scott Dadich, CD of WIRED and features a cover photograph by Plamen Petkov. For the first time, the book is a horizontal affair with a double-spine, hard-cover, 3-piece case with extended flap and magnet enclosure in foil-embossed black satin with a silk-screened printed edge.
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Robert Pollard's Album Art

I love records, not just because they're more fun to play, but because they feel good in the hand and you can see the album art better.  Who hasn't bought a record based on cover art alone?    
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Feeling Presidential?

Anxious about the current state of things? Want to get involved? Be a part of the solution? You can be the solution...

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The Flamenco Biennial

I was recently in Sevilla, Spain for the Flamenco Biennial and wanted to share some thoughts and photos with you. The city commissioned many artists of different mediums to pay tribute to the history of Flamenco dance and the incredible women who have been involved for many years in keeping it alive. It is a month of poetry, dance, music, photography, painting, etc... It brings the old and new together for a big, well... PARTY.

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PAPER TO PIXELS: Who is Andrew Essex?

Want to know where publishing is headed? Ask someone who deals with print advertisers around the world every day.  And if he happens to have a massive and prestigious magazine background as well...you should handcuff him to your desk and make him tell you everything he knows.

Meet Andrew Essex, CEO of Droga5.

The founder and former editor-in-chief of Absolute magazine, Andrew is a twenty year magazine veteran. Before Absolute, he was executive editor of Details magazine. He has also held senior editorial posts at The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, Men's Health and Interview and served as consultant for launches of Us Weekly and Salon.com.
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